Why did it take EFCC so long?

Mr Chibuike Achigbu, the intriguing man who some reports described as an oil magnate, was on Saturday granted administrative bail by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The businessman had launched himself into the thick of the controversy swirling around the $15 million alleged to have been offered as bribe to Mallam Nuhu Ribadu by the former Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori. In late August, Achigbu had gone to court claiming ownership of the money, which he said was not a bribe but money pooled together by influential businessmen as donation to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2007 elections.

He named Senator Andy Uba as a witness and hoped the legislator would corroborate his account of the transaction, which he said was conducted in the senator’s Abuja residence. While Uba admitted knowledge of the transaction, he balked at going into details, saying he knew nothing beyond the fact that his residence was used merely as venue of the transaction.

But for reasons he would not disclose, Achigbu withdrew the case from court as intriguingly as he filed it. But by then it was too late. The cat had been let out of the murky bag. For soon after, Festus Keyamo, a legal practitioner, applied to court for an order through Direct Criminal Complaint procedure to compel the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) to investigate all those involved in the bribery saga. An Abuja Chief Magistrate Court gave the order and asked the IGP to report back on September 26.

All these manoeuvres, of course, have nothing to do with the main case itself which is still before a Federal High Court in Abuja where the federal government is battling to legitimise its queer status as receiver of alleged stolen money, and Delta State is latching on to the allegation made by the original beneficiary, Ribadu, to claim ownership.

Along the line, however, the EFCC on Thursday waded into the legal fracas and arrested Achigbu as part of the agency’s investigation of the bribery saga. It is not known whether they will pick up Uba, also as part of the investigation. Hardball, readers will recall, had repeatedly suggested the case was a very simple open and close one.

All the authorities needed to do, he argued, was haul all the people mentioned in the transaction to court, particularly Ribadu and the man he sent to collect the money, Mr Ibrahim Lamorde, who happens to be the current EFCC chairman. Surely they couldn’t have become so amnesiac as not to remember how the exchange was done and the discussions that led to it. Why complicate a clear case, a puzzled Hardball queried?

It has taken EFCC an awful long time to wade into a matter it ought on its own to have tackled effortlessly and even routinely. But better late than never. The public must indeed hope that the agency will really get to the bottom of the controversy.

After all, Lamorde is available to be interrogated by the agency’s operatives, and Ribadu is still alive and kicking. It must also puzzle everyone that it had to take a court order to compel the police to live up to their responsibility.

It is expected they will buckle down to it. However, like the EFCC, the police should have taken a natural interest in wading eagerly into a matter that is clearly within their purview. If the country has come to such a pass that outsiders and the courts now think for public officials, well, so be it. Think for them we will; and as frequently as are required to snap them out of their self-imposed paralysis.